[Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 76, Issue 4

[Brad Parker]

>> 
>> I have a number of VMS BACKUP savesets that were created as disk  
>> files on my VAX host, and then FTP-ed in BINARY mode to a PC.
>> 
>> What's the easiest way to convert them into SIMH magtape files so  
>> that they can be accessed by VMS running within SIMH as tape-based  
>> savesets ?

It depends on the format of the saveset disk files you have,
and what happened to them as they were ftp'd.

If they are written as a byte stream, and every "n" bytes is a block,
then you could easily write a perl script or C program to convert
them to a simh style tape image.  I would bet that is the case.

I would go grab a copy of Eric's tape utilities.  They illustrate
the format of the tape image files.

	http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/software/tapeutils/

There are also a few programs which will read vms back up tapes
and decode them on a linux box.  Might be handy to check the
images once you are done.  If you can't find one let me know.

The basic idea of the simh tape format is that each block is 
surrounded by a prefix and suffix which describe the block.
That way tapes with variable sized blocks can be easily described.
The prefix's also describe tape marks and EOM markers, as well
as bad blocks.

-brad

Brad Parker
Heeltoe Consulting
781-483-3101
http://www.heeltoe.com




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